This post is a compilation of excerpts from articles written by PSIA-AASI Education Development Manager Angelo Ross. Whether you are a new snowsports instructor or a seasoned vet, there is something here for you. This is a great post to bookmark and refer back to throughout the season! All posts are individually linked, and you can access the PSIA-AASI blog in its entirety here.
Leveraging the Protégé Effect, a Best Practice in Teaching
Connecting with all students can be a challenge for every teacher. Developing relationships based on trust often takes time, and in a fast-paced learning environment that can be crowded and noisy, subject to adverse weather, and a bit stressful, having specific strategies on hand for connecting with different personality types can facilitate communication, trust, and learning. Understanding and leveraging the protégé effect can help.
The protégé effect is the phenomenon through which some students become more engaged with the learning environment by teaching others. A best practice teaching strategy for connecting with some of your students is to turn them into teachers.
People Skills Fundamentals: 4 Tips for Self-Assessment
My evidence is anecdotal but, in our Association, I think we’re generally more open to and interested in working to improve our technical skills (understanding, movement analysis, and performance) than our people skills and teaching skills. I’m often told, “Just tell me what I’m doing wrong,” in reference to technical performance, when working with a group of instructors during a clinic. I’ve been asked much less often to evaluate someone’s teaching performance, and I’ve never been asked to tell someone what they’re “doing wrong” with their people skills.
Self-work—intentional effort to improve one’s self-awareness, emotional well-being, and relationships—involves a vulnerability that doing better pivot slips, for example, does not. While technical performance improvement may involve some physical risk and take some time and effort, critical evaluation of self hits deeper. Self-work is inherently subjective and, therefore, biased. It can threaten our self-image, stir up uncomfortable memories and emotions, and create cognitive dissonance by clashing with our self-concept of being a good person.
Not All Snowsports Lessons Are Created Equal
Reflect on a tour you’ve been on—in a museum, on a bus, or at a historic site. Chances are it was enjoyable, informative, and worth the cost. Perhaps your tour guide was exceptional—engaging, personable, and full of fascinating tidbits.
But can you recall more than a few factoids from that experience? Chances are, while it entertained and informed you in the moment, much of that information wasn’t retained in your long-term memory. And that’s okay—most tours aren’t designed for that. They’re meant to inform and entertain, not to help you retain.
As snowsports instructors, our work is different. In fact, our job is to connect with students so we can help them move new understanding and skills from short-term novelty into lasting ability: to inform, entertain, and retain.
Interleaving: Mix It Up to Make It Stick
Conscientious snowsports educators are always on the lookout for ways to help students learn more effectively and enjoy their time on snow. We study to deepen our technical understanding, practice technique to deliver accurate demos, and set our egos aside to focus on our students’ goals. One often overlooked piece of the puzzle is how practice is structured within our lessons. Enter interleaving—a simple, research-backed strategy that can elevate both teaching and learning.
Interleaving is the practice of mixing different but related skills or tasks within a learning session, rather than focusing on one skill at a time. Contrast interleaving with blocking, during which a single task is repeated before moving to something else.
- Blocking: “During today’s session, we’re going to focus on pivot slips until everyone has them down pat.”
- Interleaving: “Today, we’ll alternate between pivot slips and short turns to see what we can learn from both.”
From Small Talk to Skill Growth: Refining Instructor Questions
“Hi, how are you?” “Fine, how are you?” “Fine, thanks.”
In terms of types of exchanges, this common back-and-forth is classified as phatic, “denoting or relating to language used for general purposes of social interaction, rather than to convey information or ask questions.” It is language intended to set a mood and to maintain social connection without an exchange of substantive information. Phatic language is ritualistic and commonly called small talk.
Other common phatic expressions are, “How ya doing?”, “Cold enough for ya?”, “Hey, what’s up?”
In our world of snowsports instruction, the most prevalent phatic expression, posed often after assigning students a task and giving them a chance to try it, is, “How did that feel?”, which typically generates the automatic, and mostly inert, response, “Good,” which usually precipitates assigning another task, observing another attempt, and asking, “How did that feel?” “Good.” And so on.
Adapting to Our Students’ Needs: The How
Our ability to adapt to our students’ needs—to read the moment and respond with empathy and accuracy—is what transforms a good lesson into a great one. Within the PSIA-AASI Learning ConnectionSM model (LCM), adapting is not a single adjustment, rather it is a continual process that weaves through and connects People, Teaching, and Technical Skills. It is the driver behind every decision and behavior that shapes the learning environment.
Adaptability begins with awareness—of the environment, our students, and ourselves. Being mindful keeps us in tune with the real-time rhythm of the lesson: the energy of the group, the changing conditions, and the emotional tone that shifts from run to run.
Through the lens of Instructor Decisions & Behaviors (ID&B), mindfulness means noticing before reacting. It is recognizing subtle cues—hesitation, enthusiasm, fatigue—and making purposeful choices about what to say or do next.
The Boots on the Snow series webinars can be accessed here on the PSIA-AASI E-Learning Site.